Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Verse of the Day
Verse of the Day
Sep 14, 2025 12:11 AM

  Commentary on Today's Verse

  Commentary on Deuteronomy 30:15-20

  (Read Deuteronomy 30:15-20)

  What could be said more moving, and more likely to make deep and lasting impressions? Every man wishes to obtain life and good, and to escape death and evil; he desires happiness, and dreads misery. So great is the compassion of the Lord, that he has favoured men, by his word, with such a knowledge of good and evil as will make them for ever happy, if it be not their own fault. Let us hear the sum of the whole matter. If they and theirs would love God, and serve him, they should live and be happy. If they or theirs should turn from God, desert his service, and worship other gods, that would certainly be their ruin. There never was, since the fall of man, more than one way to heaven; which is marked out in both Testaments, though not with equal clearness. Moses meant that same way of acceptance, which Paul more plainly described; and Paul's words mean the same obedience, on which Moses more fully treated. In both Testaments the good and right way is brought near, and plainly revealed to us.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Unintended Consequences and Wind Turbines
With the surge in oil prices, there’s renewed interest in alternative energy options. Numerous countries have gradually taken steps to promoting renewable or clean energy technologies, and it seems the United States is drifting more towards favoring alternative energy options as the Obama Administration is looking at banning off shore drilling along the continental shelf until 2012 and beyond. However, before we move farther down this road, a critical analysis of the pros and cons is a must. A more...
Review: Defending Constantine
We’ll have the Winter 2011 issue of Religion & Liberty online later this week and you won’t want to miss it. Subscribe here. We’re previewing the issue on the PowerBlog with a book review that, because of space limitations, had to be shortened. This post publishes it in full. Constantine and the Great Transformation Defending Constantine by Peter J. Leithart (IVP Academic, 2010) Reviewed by Johannes L. Jacobse The argument that the lifting of the persecutions of early Christians and...
‘A Call for Intergenerational Justice’ and the Question of Economic Growth
While there is much to applaud in the Center for Public Justice and Evangelicals for Social Action’s “A Call for Intergenerational Justice,” the lack of discussion of the problem of economic growth is troubling. I believe Don Peck is correct when he writes in The Atlantic: If it persists much longer, this era of high joblessness will likely change the life course and character of a generation of young adults—and quite possibly those of the children behind them as well....
Taking His Name in Vain: What Would Jesus Cut?
Ray’s post pointed to something that’s been bugging me about Jim Wallis’ “What Would Jesus Cut?” campaign. As with the “What Would Jesus Drive?” campaign (“Transportation is a moral issue.” What isn’t these days?), Wallis’ campaign assumes the moral high ground by appropriating the Holy Name of Jesus Christ to advance his highly politicized, partisan advocacy. Jesus es an advertising slogan. And what is implicit here is that those who oppose Wallis are somehow at odds with the Gospel of...
Budgets, the Church, and the Welfare State
In this mentary, which will appear tomorrow, I summarize and explore a bit more fully some of the discussion surrounding evangelical and religious engagement of the budget battles in Washington. One of my core concerns is that the approaches seem to assume too much ongoing and primary responsibility on the part of the federal government for providing direct material assistance to the poor. As “A Call for Intergenerational Justice” puts it, “To reduce our federal debt at the expense of...
Jeff Jacoby: Jesus won’t tell them what to cut
Writing in the Boston Globe, columnist Jeff Jacoby says that a “more fundamental problem with the “What Would Jesus Cut?’’ campaign is its planted axiom that Jesus would want Congress to do anything at all.” As a believing Jew and a conservative, I don’t share the religious outlook or political priorities of Wallis and his co-signers. But you don’t have to be Christian or liberal to believe that in God’s eyes, a society is judged above all by its concern...
Abortion and Intergenerational Justice
I’m not sure I have ever really encountered the term intergenerational justice before this discussion over “A Call for Intergenerational Justice,” at least in any substantive way. This unfamiliarity is what lay behind my initial caveat regarding the term, my concern that it not be understood as “code for something else.” The Call itself provides a decent definition of the concept, or at least of its implications: “…that one generation must not benefit or suffer unfairly at the cost of...
Archbishop Chaput: The American experience and global religious liberty
A brilliant assessment of where we are. (HT: American Orthodox Institute Observer). Subject to the governor of the universe: The American experience and global religious liberty March 1, 2011 – Most Rev. Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap., Archbishop of Denver, addressed the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs at Georgetown University. A friend once said – I think shrewdly — that if people want to understand the United States, they need to read two documents. Neither one is...
Shane Claiborne’s Budget Babbling
Writing for the Huffington Post, Shane Claiborne is also asking “What Would Jesus Cut?” I’m still opposed to the whole notion of reducing Christ to budget director, as my earlier post points out. But Jesus as Secretary of Defense of the United States or rather, Jesus as secretary of peace as proposed by Congressman Dennis Kucinich is equally unhelpful. Mark Tooley, president of IRD, has already weighed in on Shane Claiborne’s not so brilliant drafting of Jesus for president. As...
Opposing Views: America’s Debt Crisis and ‘A Call for Intergenerational Justice’
Last week’s issuance of “A Call for Intergenerational Justice: A Christian Proposal on the American Debt Crisis” has occasioned a good bit of discussion on the topic, both here at the PowerBlog and around various other blogs and social media sites. It has been interesting to see the reaction that ments about the Call have generated. Many have said that I simply misunderstood or misread the document. I have taken the time to reread the document and do some reassessment...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved